#ModelAttribute and #SessionAttribute in Spring - spring-mvc

As Spring Specification said, #ModelAttribute will executed before the mapping handler and #SessionAttribute will keep the model attribute in session.
Consider below scenario: form bean is created after the controller is called and is set as session attribute as well. Next time MenuController is called, createForm() will be executed again and create another new form bean. My question is: will this latest created form bean be set as session attribute? and which form bean will be bind to the parameter in method bookList()?
Hope you guys can help. Thank you.
#Controller
#RequestMapping("/store")
#SessionAttribute("form")
public class MenuController {
#ModelAttribute("form")
public Form createForm() {
return new Form();
}
#RqeustMapping("/book")
public String bookList(#ModelAttribute("form") Form form){
//processing the form
}
}

When the bookList method is invoked for the first time in a given session, then method with #ModelAttribute('form) is invoked, the returned value (Form object) is stored in HttpSession and finally the bookList method is invoked with the same Form object passed as an argument (obtained from session).
For the subsequent requests within the same HttpSession, Spring retrieves the same Form object from the session and doesn't call the method with #ModelAttribute('form') again till the end of the session.
After each end of the bookList method invocation Spring stores updated version of Form object in HttpSession.
If you are using Spring Boot 2.x you can debug DefaultSessionAttributeStore#retrieveAttribute method to understand this behaviour.

Remember that your mapping is generalised. It will map both to a GET method and a POST method.
If your request mapping is a GET method,
The session attribute will hold the value of the #ModelAttribute("form") from the method createForm.
If an attribute form is returned from a POST request,
The session Attribute will override the #Model Attribute from the createForm method.
It is helpful to remember that the #ModelAttribute will execute before the mapping handler.

the sessionAttribute indicates that the "form" will be saved in the session. not meaning the "form" is retrieved from the session.

Related

Get all annotated classes and call each method to get a return value

I am creating a small validation application using Spring MVC. I am very new to Spring MVC and would like to ensure that what I want is possible.
I have simplified my problem.
I have setup a controller that will be called when a URL is executed. localhost/validate/{SOME TEXT}
The {SOME TEXT} value with be sent to all my validation classes I created.
I currently have 4 classes which does the validation and returns another Object data about what happened during the validation
The 4 validation classes are:
CreditCardValidator
AddressValidator
ZipcodeValidator
AccountNumberValidator
I have a main controller bean that when called I want the string to be passed to each class and the object returned from each to be stored and then finally all results are sent back in a response.
Normally, I would do this without Spring by creating an interface that each validation class implements. Then iteration through the list of classes and execute a method.
The problem doing it that way is that whenever I need to add a new validation class I'll need to register it so the request can use it. This involved modifying existing classes.
Since I am using Spring quick heavily in this application I am wondering if this is possible to do via Spring and annotated classes.
I was thinking of creating a custom annotation that each validation class has and then using spring component-scan to get the classes. This would allow me to create new validations without modifying existing code.
Below is the what I am trying to do.
#Controller
public class StringValidationController {
#RequestMapping(value = "/validate/{text:.+}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ModelAndView index(#PathVariable("text") String text) {
ModelAndView model = new ModelAndView();
model.setViewName("index");
model.addObject("result", getListOfValidatedData());
return model;
}
public List getListOfValidatedData(){
//Scan for IValidator annotation
//call each concrete class and pass in text
// get object with has validation information in it
}
}

Set model attribute during a resource phase Spring MVC

I need to update my model attribute inside a resource method. The thing is that, after update it, I'd need to set this new modified bean in the model, in order to get the right timestamp to do the next operation when some action method be called.
I have my bean with
#SessionAttributes(ServletContextKeys.MY_BEAN)
and
#ModelAttribute(ServletContextKeys.MY_BEAN)
anotations, so I get my bean from the session in the resource method, but after update it, I've no idea how to access the model in the resource phase or any other possible workarround to solve this issue.
#ResourceMapping(ServletContextKeys.MY_RESOURCE_METHOD)
public final void updateDoc(){
MyBean myBean = getBeanFromSession();
MyBean myNewBean = myService.updateDocs(myBean); //This mehod will change the timestamp and return the updated bean
//Now I'd like to set the bean in the model. How could I access it?
model.addAttribute(ServletContextKeys.MY_BEAN, myNewBean);
}

Why is it that when I pass a Model to my .Net MVC 4 Controller Action it insists on using it in the Partial Update?

I am intending to pass a Hotel model to my Controller Action - Do some checks/processing on it, then return a potentially different Hotel model rendered in a Partial View.
The problem I'm getting is that if I pass the oHotelParameter Model to the Action then the PartialView uses the model passed to the Action instead of the one passed to the PartialView method.
If I remove the oHotelParameter Parameter from the Action then the View is Rendered as expected using oHotel.
public ActionResult _SaveMasterDetails(Hotel oHotelParameter)
{
//Do some processing on oHotelParameter
//........
Hotel oHotel = new Hotel();
oHotel.GetHotelInfoById(14); //This gets a different Hotel object just for a test
//For some reason oHotel is ignored and oHotelParameter is used instead unless I remove oHotelParameter
return PartialView("_MasterDetails", oHotel);
}
When I debug the View I see that the Model is set to the value I pass to PartialView (oHotel), yet the result I see coming back from the Action contains data from the oHotelParameter object.
In case it makes a difference, I am calling the Action from jQuery ajax.
Can anyone explain why this should happen?
when mvc handles a form post, it fills the ModelState object with the details of the model.
This is when used when the view is rendered again from the post action, this is incase you have thrown the view back out because it has failed validation.
If you want to pass out a new model and not use the view state, then you can call ModelState.Clear() before returning the view and that should let you rebind the view to the new model.
I think that it would help if you had a better understanding of how model binding works when you post back to an action method. In most cases, it is unecessary and inefficient to pass a view model as a parameter to a POST action method. What you are doing is loading the view model into memory twice when you pass your view model as a parameter (assuming a strongly typed view). When you do a post back the model becomes part of the form collection (through model binding) in the request object in the BaseController class that every controller inherits from. All that you need to do is to extract the model from the Form collection in the Request object in the BaseController. It just so happens that there is a handy method, TryUpdateModel to help you do this. Here is how you do it
[POST]
public ActionResult Save()
{
var saveVm = new SaveViewModel();
// TryUpdateModel automatically populates your ViewModel!
// TryUpdateModel also calls ModelState.IsValid and returns
// true if your model is valid (validation attributes etc.)
if (TryUpdateModel(saveVm)
{
// do some work
int id = 1;
var anotherSaveVm = GetSaveVmBySomeId(id);
// do more work with saveVm and anotherSaveVm
// clear the existing model
ModelState.Clear();
return View(anotherSaveVm);
}
// return origonal view model so that the user can correct their errors
return View(saveVm);
}
I think that the data in the form collection contained in the request object is being returned with the view. When you pass the model back to the post action method as a parameter, I believe it is passed in the query string (see Request.QueryString). Most of the time, it is best to only pass one or two primitive type parameters or primitive reverence types such as int? to an action method. There is no need to pass the entire model as it is already contained in the Form collection of the Request object. If you wish to examine the QueryString, seee Request.QueryString.

Pass bean object from MVC to Spring WebFlow

I need to pass a bean object from MVC to webFlow. Currently, I am achieving it this way:
Storing my bean object as request attribute in controller.
Forwarding to flow.
Accessing the object from flowRequestContext on-start of my flow and setting it in flowScope.
#RequestMapping(value = "/ProcessUser", method=RequestMethod.POST)
public String processForm(LoginUser loginUser, HttpServletRequest request){
....
request.setAttribute("registrationDetails", registrationDetails);
return "forward:/chineseFlow"; //Call to flow
}
chineseFlow.xml
<on-start>
<evaluate expression="userDetailsService.getRegistrationDetails(flowRequestContext)" result="flowScope.registrationDetails"/>
</on-start>
UserDetailsService
public RegistrationDetails getRegistrationDetails(RequestContext requestContext){
HttpServletRequest httpRequest = (HttpServletRequest) requestContext.getExternalContext().getNativeRequest();
RegistrationDetails registrationDetails = (RegistrationDetails)httpRequest.getAttribute("registrationDetails");
return registrationDetails;
}
I don't want to pass multiple request parameters as input to my flow. Is this the correct way to pass the bean to SWF or is there any other better way to achieve the same?
There are not many options. Proper way would be to redesign your application so that whole process happens within the same flow, then you can store your values in flowscope to begin with. The only alternatives would be either a request attribute (which you are doing already), or session-scoped bean/session attribute. Out of these request attribute(s) is preferred as otherwise you will end up polluting your session scope, and introduce potential bugs that stem from leftover values in session scope.

How do I omit ModelAttribute parameters from the ModelAndView returned by a Spring 3 MVC action?

I have a Spring MVC controller with an action that's called using AJAX.
#SessionAttributes({"userContext"})
public class Controller
{
...
#RequestMapping(value = "/my-url", method= { RequestMethods.POST })
public ModelAndView doSomething(#ModelAttribute("userContext") UserContext context,
SessionStatus sessionStatus)
{
BusinessObject obj = doSomeBusinessLogic(context.getUserName());
sessionStatus.setComplete();
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("jsonView");
mav.addObject("someInt", obj.getId());
return mav;
}
}
When I run this action, I get the following exception:
net.sf.json.JSONException: There is a cycle in the hierarchy!
at t.sf.json.util.CycleDetectionStrategy$StrictCycleDetectionStrategy.handleRepeatedReferenceAsObject(CycleDetectionStrategy.java:97)
at net.sf.json.JSONObject._fromBean(JSONObject.java:833)
at net.sf.json.JSONObject.fromObject(JSONObject.java:168)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.json.writer.jsonlib.PropertyEditorRegistryValueProcessor.processObjectValue(PropertyEditorRegistryValueProcessor.java:127)
at net.sf.json.JSONObject._fromMap(JSONObject.java:1334)
Truncated. see log file for complete stacktrace
After doing some debugging I found out that Spring is placing the UserContext object onto the ModelAndView that I am returning. If I hard-code my user name and remove the context object from the method's parameters, the action runs successfully. Is there a way to configure Spring to omit the ModelAttribute-annotated parameters from the returned ModelAndView? As you can see, sessionStatus.setComplete() has no effect.
I've had similar problems in the past with #SessionAttributes. By declaring #SessionAttributes({"userContext"}) you're telling Spring that you want "userContext" to always be available in the model, and so Spring has no choice but to send your UserContext object out to the model, just in case you're going to be redirecting or doing something else which might end up at another Controller.
The "solution" (and I didn't like it much, but it worked) was to omit the #SessionAttributes annotation on the controller, add an HttpSession parameter to the necessary methods and "manually" manage what's in it.
I'm interested to see if there's a better way, because it seems #SessionAttributes has tremendous potential to tidy up controller-level code.
I registered a WebArgumentResolver to get to my session variable. This allowed me to keep this session variable out of the response while keeping my action unit testable.
Along with #ModelAttribute, pass #ModelMap as a method argument.
Based on business logic, error conditions -- if you do not need the attribute for certain scenarios, then remove it from the map.
public ModelAndView foo(#ModelAttribute("userContext") UserContext, #ModelMap map){
if(success){
return success.jsp
}
else{
map.remove("userContext");
return "error.jsp"
}
}
Not totally satisfied with having to pass the ModelMap as well, but I did not find any other easier way of doing it.
Cheers!!

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